2026 feels like another rejuvenation cycle for 3D platformers, as indie developers continue to use their inspirations to invent new takes on the genre. In the late 90s we had Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot, and the early to mid 2000s, Ratchet and Clank, and Jak and Daxter. Whereas, this decade gifted us Super Mario Odyssey and Donkey Kong Bananza. But the continued renaissance in the boundary pushing indie scene is what's impressed me. First, we had the excellent Big Hops, and now, Demon Tides.

Developer Fabraz returns with a sequel to their 3D platformer, Demon Turf, in Demon Tides - an open world, 3D platformer with a focus on slick movement and story - a mix between The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker's boat exploration and an evolved version of Super Mario Odyssey's platforming.

Video Review: Demon Tides

Although Demon Tides is a direct sequel, prior knowledge of Demon Turf isn't compulsory to enjoy it. Fabraz does a great job of recapping previous events and reintroducing characters. You take the role of Beebz the Demon Queen, who after receiving an invitation from her absent father, King Ragnar, adventures to his domain, Ragnar's Rock, with her crew in tow. But what she finds is an oppressed archipalego under the rule of a cruel, tyrannical King. But Beebz is allergic to injustice and refuses to let it stand.

Before setting players loose in the open world, Demon Tides puts you through a short but necessary tutorial. Instantly, 3D platformer fans will feel at home with Beebz's normal moveset: a dash that activates a sprint until you stop, the classic Mario like jump and triple jump, a horizontal and vertical wall run. However, it's Beebz's demon powers that distinguish Demon Tides in the genre. Beebz can spin to hover, transform into a bat to propel higher and further, and turn into a snake to rapidly traverse land and sea.

But it's when you chain these fundamentals together that Demon Tides begins to flow. You combine powers to cross massive gaps and ascend tall walls. Beebz has many platforming combinations to choose from to speed-run to an objective. But she isn't all-powerful, there's a limit to her moves: Beebz can do a maximum of a double jump and a hover, or a single jump and a bat long jump before needing to land to reset the use of her powers. This creates player choice and introduced a skill element, which is vital to all challenges throughout Demon Tides.

It isn't long before muscle memory forms, then you can take advantage of Beebz's bat leap, a move where you jump, then hover forward and hit jump, which slingshots you a great distance. Or you can choose to double jump to gain height, then hit the dash attack button which propels Beebz diagonally downwards to bounce into a platform and reset her demon powers. Once these fundamentals become second nature, the platforming feels even more fluid and unique.

After the tutorial is complete, Demon Tides begins properly in a vast open world - a seemingly endless sea of possibilities. But really, Demon Tides is segmented into three large segments of a circular map. Each one is populated by islands that are Demon Tides' main levels. It invites you to transform into your snake form and blast through the ocean, to explore in any direction at your own pace. Or head straight to the main quest, to meet Runa, who explains how the structure of the game works.

In order to confront Beebz's father, she must complete challenges and help the locals populating the islands, to be rewarded with treasure chests. To progress the main quest, Beebz must collect a specific number of gold gears from chests, to give to Runa, so that she can send Beebz and her crew to the next part of the open world map.

It's a strong gameplay loop that encourages relaxed exploration. I didn't even follow the main quest line and accidentally stumbled into one of Ragnar's Champions: a jester. One of three champions that each guard a piece of the open world. Bosses that torment the land under Ragnar's orders. Following these objectives leads to many gold gears, but you'll still need to explore the other islands to find enough to advance.

Each map segment contains islands of varying biomes. From tropical, to ones flooded with molten lava, and snow covered landscapes. Most populated by interactable NPCs and multiple objective types - tasks to complete if you want to unlock a one hundred percent completion rating on each island.

Every location requires Beebz to complete a variety of tasks. You must complete challenges to unlock treasure chests containing golden gears, costumes, hairstyles and talismans that contain new skills. Collect purple eye shaped tokens called eyetems that act as Demon Tides' currency. If ever a player finds this challenging, there is a built-in item tracker, which appears in the form of a directional arrow at the push of a button.

The main challenges are varied and increase in difficulty. Some require the completion of precarious platforming sequences that combine Beebz's full moveset to overcome climbing ropes, horizontal poles, mushroom bounce pads, grind rails, consecutive wall runs, disappearing platforms, spike rollers, ladders, jump activated platforms and more.

Fortunately, Demon Tides features frequent ropes to unfurl so you can quickly return later if you fall down or decide to fast travel back to an island. But the best feature is the checkpoint system: Beebz can plant a checkpoint flag on applicable surfaces, so if you die, you can instantly teleport back to your flag and try again. It removes frustration and keeps you wanting to retry challenges until you get it right.

Another genius inclusion is graffiti; a social feature that lets any player paint helpful premade icons onto surfaces, like the messages left in a From Software title. These helped me a handful of times where I lost my sense of direction, then I noticed a piece of graffiti which showed the correct route. Social features also extend to every islands speed-run leaderboard which allows you to compete for the best time in finding that island's golden gears.

Fabraz keeps main challenges feeling fresh. You discover races where you speed through checkpoint rings in your snake form. Take control of a drone to race through rings in the sky. Tackle environmental hazards from sticky ooze or harmful winter temperatures. Return lost birds to their parents by using their flutter ability instead of your demon powers. Race ghosts through long platforming sections. Battle mini bosses called Gearserkers that feel like they're ripped from any good platformer.

But it's the hidden Mr Mint challenges that are the hardest - all controlled by a coin-shaped entity that loves to set Beebz challenges in return for a one hundred eyetem entry fee. Mr Mint's challenges often contain platforming obstacles similar to the island it is found on.

Then, there's combat. It isn't quite as prevalent as platforming, but it's substantial enough. It's a simple system comprised of a basic dash attack, and my favourite version, where you double jump, then do a downwards diagonal dash to bounce on an enemy and keep repeating it, like a deadly bouncy ball. When you combine this with Beebz's swift manoeuvrability, you get a combat system that feels good in action.

Outside of the gameplay, Demon Tides relies heavily on its omnipresent punk style. Beebz and her crew - Luci, DK and Midgi - all share an anti-establishment, youthful verve that's represented in their dialogue and actions. Snappy and often times, amusing conversations build a strong bond between the crew, but I would've preferred dialogue written without the text style speech like LOLS and BLAH. But even with it, bonds show a shared history and Beebz comes across as a rebellious but good-natured hero that is as likeable as her trusty crew - a modern rendition of the cast in any quirky cartoon that would appeal to various age groups.

A 90s cel-shaded art style ignites the punk stylings and resembles the attitude and look of something like Jet Set Radio, but with very expressive facial animations. Both the character designs and environments are incredibly vibrant and energetic, so much so, that you'd instantly recognise a screenshot of Demon Tides. Boundless personality pours through every design decision, like their travelling headquarters: The Floating Fashionista - a ship where Beebz can interact with her crew and spend Eyetems to purchase new clothes, hairstyles and talismans.

These talismans change how you approach the game. With every Champion that you beat, you unlock an additional talisman slot to equip a new skill. Allowing players to craft Beebz's skillset to their particular playstyle. If you find combat hard and want to be able to take an extra hit, you can equip a protection fairy; if you want to jump further or hover higher, you can; if you want to shoot a bubble that can be used as a deployable bounce pad, you can; and so much more.

Even with countless possible gameplay variations, I found myself keeping simple upgrades that improved my core platforming abilities. These choices simply improved my fundamental skills, which made exploration easier. But it's great to know that others will experience the game in a very different way.

There's also a camera with a selfie mode, to take advantage of the expressive cartoon characters, allowing players to take photos throughout their journey across Ragnar's Rock.

However, exploring the diverse archipelago wouldn't be as enjoyable without the brilliant and memorable score - an energetic ensemble that compounds the fun gameplay. Plus, the flawless sound effects heighten that distinct cartoon feel, giving energy to all of Beebz's platforming and exploration. Even the minimal voice work suits each distinct characters' personality. Although, the choice to not consistently voice characters during main story beats is a little disappointing when it would've taken the immersion of the story to another level. But what is here, still works well and the visuals do enough to realise a fun cast of characters.

Compared to other recent platformers, Demon Tides does require some skill to overcome the more complex platforming challenges that require switching between snake form and jumping. Some players will find it a welcome challenge, others a little frustrating at times. Thankfully, the generous flag checkpoint system does help alleviate this on most accounts.

This escalating challenge carries through to the chsmpion boss battles. These are well-designed boss encounters, that go far beyond the simple Gearserker mini-boss battles. They include distinct attack phases that make use of different gameplay mechanics. They are not particularly hard, but they are fun and require just the right amount of focus to avoid dying by taking three hits - or more if you equip the right talisman. Like in classic 3D platformer fashion, if you die, you start from the first phase and use your experience to overcome each phase until you beat them.

The only downsides throughout my over sixteen hours with Demon Tides, was the occasional inability to grab onto climbable walls and some camera issues. Like most platformers, gameplay systems have controls that need time to understand how they work. Demon Tides isn't any different: you have to learn the appropriate angle to dash onto a wall run and when to hold down the input and when to jump to the next wall. All these things become second nature, but one thing that did cause me issues was the climbing walls. Whether I hovered over or dash jumped, Beebz wouldn't always grab on.

However my biggest gripe was the camera during intense sequences when close to walls. At times, I would move with such momentum from a standard jumping sequence to an area within close proximity to walls or other environmental objects, which forced the camera to clip or make it very difficult to see the whole image or understand where to go. This is nonexistent in wide open areas, and the developers do try to alleviate this as best as they can with the inclusion of two camera settings: one closer to Beebz, and one that's pulls out.

Outside of this, there's some environmental pop in when zooming through the ocean towards islands, but nothing major. Whereas, the performance remained incredibly smooth ninety nine percent of the time, only dropping for milliseconds when islands loaded in. But that could be different on other hardware.

The biggest compliment I can give to Demon Tides is it somehow manages to find the secret ingredient that Nintendo invented and cooked up in their video games since their origin - a compulsive want to find every golden gear and collectible just to spend more time exploring the colourful world of Ragnar's Rock.

Clearly Demon Tides has numerous inspirations and somehow accomplishes the task of feeling entirely its own thing; the rare 3D platformer able to appeal to fans of collectathons, speedrunners and pure platformers. It's yet another can't miss platformer for 2026, and we're only two months in. And surprisingly, Fabraz aims to launch another title, Bubsy 4D later on this year. So, if you enjoy agile 3D platformers set in a vibrant and entertaining world, Demon Tides is a must play.

Review - Demon Tides

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